Boulder's goal: 9,000 parking tickets a month

Official says it's not a 'quota,' but concerns arise downtown

Marc Krulewitch, a parking officer, writes a ticket in downtown Boulder on Monday. The city s 10 parking-enforcement officers were told earlier this year to meet a new goal that amounts to writing about 45 tickets a day, or one ticket every 11 minutes, based on a regular work week.
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MARTY CAIVANO
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Parking tickets, by the numbers

The city of Boulder has issued a new directive to its parking-enforcement officers to write an average of 900 tickets each, per month. That would equal about 9,000 tickets total a month. Here's a look at the average number of tickets written monthly by year:

2009 -- 8,600

2008 -- 9,125

2007 -- 8,000

2006 -- 8,835

2005 -- 8,976

Parking ticket revenue by year

*2010 -- $316,000

2009 -- $1.9 million

2008 -- $2.2 million

2007 -- $2 million

2006 -- $1.8 million

2005 -- $2 million

*Through February

Source: city of Boulder

Boulder parking-enforcement officers have a new directive: Each write an average of 900 tickets a month.

Kurt Matthews, director of Boulder's Parking Services division, said the city's 10 parking-enforcement officers were told earlier this year to meet the new goal -- which is equal to writing about 45 tickets a day, or one ticket every 11 minutes, based on a regular work week.

Officers who consistently fail to meet the minimum average, along with other standards, could face losing their annual pay raise under the city's "pay-for-performance" merit system.

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While some people called the policy a hard-line approach that doesn't leave room for warnings -- and doesn't buy officers some much-needed good will among the already-petulant public -- city officials said the move is aimed at setting higher standards for officer productivity.

He said the move toward the so-called performance model is designed to bring fairness to a department where a few officers often account for a disproportionately large percentage of the tickets written each month.

"If you have employees whose numbers are a whole heck of a lot lower than everyone else's, then you address it so everyone is doing their fair share of work," Matthews said. "What we're trying to do is even the playing field."

Parking tickets over the last five years have generally produced about $2 million a year for the city. But the new policy is not, according to Matthews, aimed at filling the city's coffers.

"It's not for revenue production, it's not for punishment, it's not for meeting numbers," he said. "It is to manage the parking and the limited resource that we have downtown, primarily."

One Boulder parking officer, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retribution, said several officers are upset with the policy change: "We're going out there and writing things that ordinarily would have been warnings."

Such minor infractions might include parking a foot or two beyond a marker, or overstaying a metered time limit by a few minutes.

"We were actually told warnings were just a waste of paper," the officer said, adding that the new policy doesn't reflect well on a city that's hoping to attract more spending in downtown restaurants and shops.

Eric Guenther was hired by the city in January to lead the parking officers as assistant director of Parking Services, which has had a string of managers for at least the past three years.

A 26-year veteran of the Northglenn Police Department, Guenther said he is putting his foot down on setting standards for his officers, but it's not directed at punishing the public.

"The objective in managing parking is keeping vehicles moving," he said.

Guenther said his officers still have the ability to use their own discretion and to issue warnings, but they are now the "exception to the rule."

"I know people don't like to pay for parking," he said. "It just doesn't benefit the city of Boulder if we don't manage parking."

Tara Fitzgerald, a Boulder businesswoman who manages a financial firm on the Pearl Street Mall, said she gets a parking ticket at least once a week. She can't help it, she said, because meetings keep her busy or parking garages are inconvenient.

Fitzgerald was a police officer in New York City for seven years before an injury forced her to retire. She said she's worried about any monthly goal because that discourages warnings and chances to educate the public about the rules.

"I think that's ridiculous," she said of the 900-ticket rule. "People come down here to spend money, and they're getting ticketed."

The concept of ticket quotas is handled differently across the country but rarely comes without controversy.

In the late 1990s, it was revealed that Washington, D.C., parking officers each had a quota of 90 tickets a day. In March, Illinois lawmakers shot down a bill that would have banned police from using quotas in their officer evaluations. A similar bill is being considered in Tennessee.

In San Francisco, officials are battling accusations that parking officers are issuing tickets for non-violations to meet city quotas.

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